Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja

“Iran’s Fractured Leadership”

Posted on by under moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Princeton University, War with Iran

I wrote the post below the line back in April, but got pulled into other things, and never posted it. But I feel pretty vindicated: since late March, the Times’s narrative has turned 180 degrees. In March, they were quoting officials quite sure that Iran’s leadership was too “fractured” to act in a unified way. Remember that? By July 29, the narrative became: “Trump Encounters a More Determined Iran as War Widens.” By August 1, it was: “In Iran, the U.S. Appears Headed for Strategic Defeat, Allies Fear.”

Good call, NYT, but how the fuck did that happen? How did Iran go from being all fractured and confused to achieving victory over the supposedly unified and all-powerful United States in four months? One possibility is that though “fractured,” Iran had the capacity to heal its “fractures” pretty fast. The other is that Iran was never all that fractured in the first place. In the first case, we’ve gotten no account from the Times of the transition from the one thing to the other; in the other, we’ve gotten no acknowledgement of its false assessment of Iranian dysfunction. Either way, the question arises: how much do these journalistic “experts” really know, anyway? To the extent that they know anything, how much of their knowledge is ultimately neutralized by the desire to generate nationalist propaganda? Continue reading →

Port Elizabeth 4 On Trial

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, General announcements, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Port Elizabeth 4 Face Trial for Blocking the Shipment of Weapons to Israel’s Genocide 

Press Contacts: Mary Anne Grady Flores, gradyflores08@gmail.com (607)-280-8797
                          Haqq Sankara, haqqsankara@tuta.com (interviews available)

August 5; press conference: 9:30 am; trial scheduled to begin 10 am
1 Police Plaza
Elizabeth Municipal Court
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201

July 30th.  Four activists known as the Port Elizabeth 4, face trial on Wednesday, August 5th at 10 am at 1 Police Plaza, Elizabeth, NJ (press conference at 9:30 am) for blocking the main roadway to the Port of Elizabeth on October 3, 2025. They were part of an autonomous coalition of 100 protestors who stopped trucks delivering military cargo to the Port of Elizabeth bound for Israel on the Maersk Sentosa vessel. By August 5th, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza will have gone on for 1,028 days, beyond three years.

Continue reading →

Institutional Neutrality, Coeducation, and History

Posted on by under activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Princeton University, War with Iran

Since my first post here on institutional neutrality in 2025, Heterodox Academy has, predictably, re-affirmed its commitment to the doctrine by way of the same tired “arguments” for it, and done its fair share of bragging about the latest institutions to have signed on to it. For all their talk about “viewpoint diversity” and the burdens of rational discourse, the defenders of institutional neutrality seem pretty oblivious to the arguments that have been made against it. I haven’t, for instance, seen any serious attempts to deal with the complicity-based objections I’ve raised to it over the last year. I’ll take that as my cue to deploy yet another of the (literally) dozens of counter-examples I have to institutional neutrality, if only for the fun of piling them up. Continue reading →

Unfortunate Sons

Posted on by under activism, Fatwas, Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

What’s remarkable here is the total lack of self-awareness with which these people will hold a graduation ceremony for soldiers (officers) in a public park, then rationalize the bombing of schools, hospitals, bridges, power plants, and crowds of starving civilians by claiming that the presumptive presence of n “terrorists” or “militants” at those locations makes it all OK. Wouldn’t the same logic rationalize blowing up everyone in the park pictured here, including all of the complacent but supportive civilians? What complaint could they offer if someone did here what was done at Old Dominion University?

Continue reading →

A(nother) Reductio for Institutional Neutrality

Posted on by under activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, pedagogy, Princeton University

And a challenge to its defenders
Imagine a university whose administration passes what it takes to be a procedurally neutral rule–a “time, manner, place” restriction–prohibiting all protests on campus that take place either on grass or on thoroughfares. Protests inside university buildings are prohibited as well. Protests on grass, admin says, damage the grass, and protests on thoroughfares are a traffic hazard. Obviously, protests inside university buildings are too disruptive of university business to be permitted. All neutral considerations.

Now suppose that 99% of campus consists either of grass, thoroughfares, or buildings. It follows that large scale protests will be made impossible on such a campus. 

Continue reading →

DHS Is Systematically Lying to You

Posted on by under activism, Health Care Series, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

People sometimes claim to be unable to decide between the claims of, say, DHS and migrant defense activists. Faced with conflicting stories, people sometimes retreat into a kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism: each side is incompatible with the other, they’ll say, but neither side’s claims can easily be rejected. So we’re left with an undecidable clash of equal and opposite positions.

What to do? The original Pyrrhonian skeptics believed that tranquility was to be sought in the undecidable clash of such equal and opposite claims.* So they lived their lives–or tried to–without having any settled beliefs at all. If belief leads to conflict (they thought), non-belief eliminates it, producing the calm equanimity of the perpetually uncommitted. I sometimes wonder whether this is the guiding ethos of our news media and its modal consumer. If “mental health” means tranquility, and tranquility demands perpetual agnosticism, maybe it’s safer (people seem to be reasoning) to give equal credence to every claim, even if the resulting tranquility is purchased at the price of cognitive paralysis.

Continue reading →

The Delaney Hall Scandal Revisited

Posted on by under activism, Fatwas, Health Care Series, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

Expert Insights and Journalistic Failures
Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with, and possibly sick of, my fixation over the sanitary condition of Delaney Hall. I’ve written four posts on the subject.

On June 24, I challenged New Jersey State Senator Holly Schepisi’s whitewash of the state health department’s report on Delaney Hall. On June 25, I took issue with Politico’s misreporting on the subject. On June 27, I took issue with NJ.com’s misreporting on the subject. And on July 2, I responded to Holly Schepisi’s incredibly stupid attempt to “respond” to my earlier challenge. Since then, I’ve demanded that all three of them–Schepisi, Politico, and NJ.com–retract or correct the false claims they’ve made on the subject. Schepisi has served up evasive bullshit; Politico and NJ.com have simply stonewalled and gone silent.

Continue reading →

The Wokeness Threat is a Right-Wing Scam

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Princeton University, slices of life, War with Iran, West Orange

I did my annual DEI certification at work the other day. It’s the same one I’ve done here since 2022. The training video is produced by a company called KnowBe4, which specializes in workplace risk reduction: “15+ years of behavior data, 70,000 global customers, 12-in-production security awareness agents…1 of 3 full time US workers has been trained by us.” Not a fly-by-night operation, and not unrepresentative of corporate DEI training. Just the reverse. The norm.

The training took all of 15 minutes. What did I learn? Six woke lessons.

Continue reading →

Our Sacred Honor

Posted on by under activism, libertarianism, migrant defense

I can’t say that I’ve felt very much enthusiasm for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, insofar as 1776 marks that date (and arguably, it doesn’t). It tells you all you need to know that I spent the Fourth of July under a tree in a nearby park, reading Machiavelli in hundred degree heat. But two of my friends wrote notable and interesting pieces commemorating the 250th, and did so in interestingly similar and dissimilar ways. Both are on Substack, and both are worth reading. My friend Bob Massie has a piece called “A New Birth of Freedom” on his Substack. And my friend Chris Sciabarra has one called “From America 200 to 250: A Personal Journey” on his. 

Continue reading →